Flossing, in which a strand of dental floss is moved into and around the space between adjacent teeth has long been recommended by dentists. Conventionally, a strand of floss is wrapped around the middle of each hand, providing a short tensioned length of floss between the fingers. The fingers and floss are inserted into the mouth and the floss is guided between pairs of adjacent teeth.
In order to maintain the floss in position around the fingers and the proper tension on the inter finger strand, the floss must be wrapped tightly around the fingers. The tight wrap of =very thin floss tends to dig into the fingers and become rapidly painful, often limiting the time and care spent in flossing.
Many people find that manipulating the floss while maintaining tension and moving from tooth to tooth while looking at a reverse mirror image to be very difficult. Further the normal gag reflex can be easily triggered while flossing the back molars and touching the palate, much to the user's discomfort.
A number of different flossing devices have been developed in attempts to overcome these problems inherent in manual flossing. Zuehlsdorf in U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,510 discloses a generally U-shaped device in which floss is secured across the ends of the "U" legs and a finger is inserted between the legs. While effective with the front teeth, attempts to floss molars will be difficult since the device can easily rotate about the single finger and not correctly position the floss for entry between adjacent teeth.
Wang describes a flossing system in U.S. Pat. No. 5,503,168 in which two thimble-like members are fitted over two finger tips and floss is wrapped around the two members. While this arrangement avoids the sometimes painful direct wrapping of floss around the fingertips, it has the other problems of the manual fingertip approach. Adjusting the floss length is difficult and slipping of floss on the two members is likely. In addition, two widely spaced fingers must be inserted into the mouth and manipulated.
A large, flexible U-shaped device having floss extending around the "U" and across the space between the ends of the legs is described by Yafai in U.S. Pat. No. 4,304,246. While the endless loop of floss eliminates the risk of floss slipping off of a winding, such as around a finger tip, it the "U" legs are squeezed together at all the floss will fall off the leg ends. Further, the size of the device is such that flossing the back molars will be difficult.
Long lengths of floss secured to widely spaced rings (Trecker, U.S. Pat. No. 4,034,770) or widely spaced tubes (Wei et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,710 may help prevent slipping of the floss ends in use, but still require manual manipulation of the floss, guided by finger tips.
Other flossing devices, such as that described by Peng in U.S. Pat. No. 5,101,843 have a plastic body with projections to the ends of which a length of floss is permanently fastened. This type of device is easily manipulated by one hand. However, because of the lever action between the gripping point and the flossing point, twisting and bending of the device cannot be easily prevented with a single hand holding an extension on the device and the necessary force and movement of the floss between tightly spaced teeth is difficult and require considerable dexterity.
Thus, there is a continuing need for flossing devices that provide more effective flossing, are simpler to manipulate, can be accurately moved along the back molars and the floss inserted between tightly spaced teeth and is inexpensive to manufacture.